Christmas Gifts, part II

Alas, I don't have pictures of my family modeling their gifts, but maybe I'll get those eventually.


I made this clapo-scarf using a modified version of the famous Clapotis. It's made with Colinette Prism in the Toscana colorway, which has a thin ply of cotton and a thick ply of loosely spun wool, dyed in very pretty colors.

I must say that Prism was not an ideal yarn for Clapotis, but Clapotis was an ideal pattern for Prism. How the heck does that work, you ask? Well, the loose wool kept grabbing itself, making the unraveling very deliberate and tedious. A smoother yarn would have unraveled much more easily. But the yarn is so *busy* that anything beyond stockinette is just too much for it--believe me, I tried.

(bottom to top: garter, stockinette, garter eyelet, modified stockinette eyelet; it looked like somebody had chewed on it)

The clap's wide bands of stockinette show off the knitted fabric, and the drop-stitch bits show off the yarn on its own. I am tremendously pleased with the way this turned out, and so was Mom.


Now on to my dad's Socks with Clocks. I plan to make this pattern available someday, because I think it's a great pattern for men--not so boring that the knitter falls into a dark yarn-stockinette coma, but simple and classic enough to pass for nice dress socks. (I was informed later that Dad couldn't wear these as dress socks because the cuff was too short. His dress socks must come all the way to the widest part of the calf. I told him to buy longer pants.)


My dad is the kind of guy who is really, really hard to shop for, especially if you want the gift to be somewhat of a surprise. He drops a lot of hints, but never for anything I could actually afford to buy him. If you ask him directly what he wants (and give him a price range) it loses all elements of surprise. (Hey Dad! Get an Amazon wishlist, PLEASE!) But when you get it right, he's one of the more grateful recipients you'll ever meet. These socks are for him to sleep in, and apparently he sleeps much better with them on. Especially when Mom "admires the yarn" by rubbing his feet. I'm really proud of the way they turned out and he's apparently pretty happy with the result, too.

When I can rip myself away from the beauty that is Venezia, I make pretty decent progress on the Monkey socks: